Howdy, Stranger!
It looks like you're new here. If you want to get involved, click one of these buttons!
Quick Links
Why are Roleplayers the "Lower Class" Players?
Devour
Member Posts: 902
I don't know about you, but in the newest "big" ( and probably the small ones, too ) MMOs, it seems roleplayers have been looked down on by developers, community managers and the "1337 kids" as a lower class of players, with often no support for them and little to nothing occuring in the updates in the game.
I mean, checking out the polls here on MMORPG.com seems to suggest that roleplayers are, in fact, quite proliferant in the MMO community, with about 70% of the votes saying that they do roleplay and another poll in which 21% of people ( in a poll of 40,000! ) said they felt that roleplaying / community is the most important thing in an MMO.
I'm smelling something rotten here when game developers aren't fully supporting their most loyal fans, who'll often play a game 'til it's bloody end because of the strong sense of storyline and community they create. No, instead, they offer goods to the "normal players" who'll often jump off the band wagon to go to whatever else there is.
There is a highly untapped market here, and I suspect the next really successful game is one that encourages roleplayers to play it and for people to BECOME roleplayers.
That is all.
Comments
We are not it is just we tend to be more mature and don't engage in the kind of behavior the gets much attention. Honestly I used to like pvp and could tolerate the community until I worked at a state prison and kept hearing inmates talk about getting out and playing some of their favorite pvp games. So in my mind the pvp crowd became felons or soon to be felons and I went another way.
We're not, we're just not as easy to cater to as the PvP crowd so we don't get catered to. It's very easy for a developer to make a game with a PvP system that keeps stats, measures progress, etc. It's very, very difficult to put an RP system in place that does the same thing. Developers want something tangible in their game that they can hold up for their players. Roleplaying isn't tangible, you can't show "we have X active roleplayers, see!"
Played: UO, EQ, WoW, DDO, SWG, AO, CoH, EvE, TR, AoC, GW, GA, Aion, Allods, lots more
Relatively Recently (Re)Played: HL2 (all), Halo (PC, all), Batman:AA; AC, ME, BS, DA, FO3, DS, Doom (all), LFD1&2, KOTOR, Portal 1&2, Blink, Elder Scrolls (all), lots more
Now Playing: None
Hope: None
Most people don't like to roleplay, or just find it weird. I've thought about roleplaying, but none of the games I've played gave me the urge to. I don't want to be talking like a bootleg midievel guy all day. If the game was set in modern times, or a setting similar to it, I would probably give it a try. I think more people would give it a chance if they were allowed to act more like themselves. The main problem, in my opinion, is people don't want to talk like "HALT! Who goes there? Answer me or you will taste my steel, fiend!" (hey I'm not a roleplayer, lol)
That 'highly untapped market' is very small and often very support intensive.
Let's take your one statistic and look at it a little more closely:
"...and another poll in which 21% of people ( in a poll of 40,000! ) said they felt that roleplaying / community is the most important thing in an MMO."
1) roleplaying and community are not one in the same. Countless people want a healthy community, but a small percentage of those want to roleplay.
2) everyone has different rules for RP, which further reduces how many RPers will actually like anyone one particular RP ruleset in an MMO.
3) not all roleplayers want the same theme or setting. For example, I'd gladly RP in a Post apoc, cyberpunk or Age of Sail setting but I'm personally just plain sick of elves.
It's like saying that there is a group of people that like gourmet food and trying to cater to them. The Thai guy may not like sushi, and the sushi guy may turn green at the sight of steak tar tar. Trying to cater to all of them creates a watered down exeperience for all of them. Catering to a subset of the gourmet food people will result in an even smaller audience than the already small group of gourmet food people.
I doubt devs are "looking down on roleplayers" rather there are just so few of them and they are too diverse in their particular wants to be able to viably cater to them without planning for a very niche game.
- RPG Quiz - can you get all 25 right?
- FPS Quiz - how well do you know your shooters?
I don't know whether most statistics really show that roleplayers make up the majority of the market. Polls on MMORPG are probably not very reliable. Here's a link to a study that was done of EQ2 server logs a while back:
http://arstechnica.com/science/news/2009/02/aaas-60tb-of-behavioral-data-the-everquest-2-server-logs.ars
According to their study, the reviewers believe serious roleplayers to only comprise about 5% of the EQ2 population. One might say "well, that's only the 'serious' RP'ers - the total RP population is much higher", but there's no real way to know. The conclusions drawn in the study about the portion of the population engaged in serious roleplaying seems to perpetuate a stereotype some people hold about RP'ers. Whether that stereotype is based in truth is a discussion in which I do not intend to get involved.
Its easy realy, most players even roleplayers have several preferences,
The amound of Hardcore roleplayers are fairly small, there a lot of Casual roleplayers.
Same goos for PVP, some hardcore pvpérs , lots of casual pvp's
And then there is the "pure" casual player. (dropping pve players amoung them)
So you got a LOAD of casual players and a smaller amound of Hardcore players.
First year of live/gold status in a mmo LOADS of casual players play it.
Second year Less Casual but still manny play it.
thirth year Casual and hardcore players are getting more egual . in this year you see more and more "hardcore" content being put in the game instead of casual.
Its all about numbers. biggest paying player type gets first goodies, the "loyal fans" get goodies afther.
Its all about who gives more profit.
swg is a excelent exsample, the casual players way way less, loads of gerne/ip fan 's so they drop in "raids" Storyletting rp stuff, things that make things look nice, spaceships , PvP stuff incomming....
One could say swg always had rp stuff, kinda treu but then swg was/is a IP that draws more then the average amound of roleplayers percentage for a mmo.
Excuse spelling, at work aint got a spelling check here
Because the people making these games today in the vast majority...I'd go so far to say unanimously, aren't roleplayers (they are roll players if anything) and, well, they're the ones making the games.
I'm a believer that the first generation MMO's, you can just tell by the variety of things they allowed for you to attempt that they were made by pencil and paper roleplaying geeks, of which I'm a card carrying member. Now days, not so much. It's more of the Munchkin playing crowd making MMOs than the TSR raised crowd. Those still in the industry that were from the latter crowd are most likely now in upper management and worry about running the business' daily operations and not game mechanics. Those from that group that are, however, still designing MMO game systems most likely have just jumped ship (ideal wise) or just are out-shouted at opinion time.
"Many nights, my friend... Many nights I've put a blade to your throat while you were sleeping. Glad I never killed you, Steve. You're alright..."
Chavez y Chavez
There isn't a single MMORPG on the market that can be classed as an RPG as I knew them, where you met with a few friends, brought your dice and snacks, and played around a table. MMOs are just too impersonal to make me even contemplate role-playing, and this comes from someone who started with the AD&D A5 booklets and worked in two dedicated RPG stores, and loved the hobby.
What need is there to cater to a roleplayer? Roleplayers should be capable of doing their thing in any environment.
The other poll ( of ten thousand players ) suggests that around 30% of the playerbase is "hardcore" roleplayers, and about 40% roleplay "occasionally", so it's not that small a market. Nevermind the fact that your average non-RPer will be drawn in by roleplaying now and again, ESPECIALLY if it includes some sort of "official" stamp of approval.
Most of the time, what roleplayers want is to have roleplaying policies enforced ( which should occur for every kind of group, correct? ) and they don't get that. I'd hardly say that roleplayers are the group of players that have the most intensive needs ( that would probably go to hardcore PvE'ers ) and a bone now and again, preferably with some meat on it, will fulfill most of what your average roleplayer wants.
( Also, although many people seem afraid to admit it, players often enjoy many of the features that are "specific to roleplayers" such as housing, fluff items and vanity pets. )
First, I'm not a huge pvp fan myself. With that said, I wanted to respond to your arrogant post.
Felons also watch movies, enjoy good food and share a love for many things that regular folks also enjoy. I doubt I will see you boycott any of those things. Also, mr. fake badge, felons are people and as people are flawed just like you and me, pal. Your type of arrogance is typical, though repulsive.
In fact, I would further argue that your pig mentality is a bigger problem in our society than the guy who steals to feed his kids or finds himself addicted to narcotics. Drugs have been and always will be only OK if the government makes a dime off it. Morphine is far more potent than Heroine, but it's used in the medical field on a regular basis. By the way, I don't do drugs and never have.
I use to volunteer for Prisoner Ministries @ Chino here in California, and the guards were so corrupt it was not even funny. The only difference is, they have a position of authority to get away with it.
Like Corporate Avenger so eloquently said:
"The war on drugs is a war on people...and people’s rights are being
violated and you’re incarcerating and caging human beings often times who
have are simply victims of the sickness of addiction, who have become
sucked up in this giant war on drugs, which in fact is a crime against
humanity. The war on drugs is a war on people."
The Adventures of Fat Gamer - http://www.mmorpg.com/blogs/FatGamer
What poll numbers? I am highly suspect of any large group of RPers.
i have yet to really meet a RPers when i play MMOs. It is quite simple. Most MMOs are abotu hack-n-slash and people don't enjoy talking in "thees and thous".
Oh, and it is not just kids. Most people i know (and in my guilds) are adults and professionals.
Roleplayers CAN do their thing in any environment, as one poster put it, but that doesn't mean they will WANT to any any environment.
YOU CAN make WoW hard core by playing naked with no gear, but that doesn't players that want a more hardcore game would be satisfied with this option.
YOU CAN group in any game that allows it, but that doesn't meant that people that like grouping games will be satisfied grouping in a solo friendly environment.
I think Devs could add many tools to games to allow roleplayers to engage in meaningful roleplay, without adversely impacting on the gamers that don't want to participate in roleplay.
http://www.mmorpg.com/features.cfm/view/polls
Under "Do you Role Play?" and "What aspect of MMORPG's are you more into?".
First, I'm not a huge pvp fan myself. With that said, I wanted to respond to your arrogant post.
Felons also watch movies, enjoy good food and share a love for many things that regular folks also enjoy. I doubt I will see you boycott any of those things. Also, mr. fake badge, felons are people and as people are flawed just like you and me, pal. Your type of arrogance is typical, though repulsive.
In fact, I would further argue that your pig mentality is a bigger problem in our society than the guy who steals to feed his kids or finds himself addicted to narcotics. Drugs have been and always will be only OK if the government makes a dime off it. Morphine is far more potent than Heroine, but it's used in the medical field on a regular basis. By the way, I don't do drugs and never have.
I use to volunteer for Prisoner Ministries @ Chino here in California, and the guards were so corrupt it was not even funny. The only difference is, they have a position of authority to get away with it.
Like Corporate Avenger so eloquently said:
"The war on drugs is a war on people...and people’s rights are being
violated and you’re incarcerating and caging human beings often times who
have are simply victims of the sickness of addiction, who have become
sucked up in this giant war on drugs, which in fact is a crime against
humanity. The war on drugs is a war on people."
I have no idea what that last part was intended to convey in this context, but you focus solely on the crime argument when there's a maturity argument that could also be undermined by pointing to the article I previously posted.
I'll quote the relevant section here:
"Links between the real and virtual world
In addition to introducing the EQ2 logs as a resource, Dmitri Williams described some of the efforts involved in exploring how much of the real world spilled over into the virtual.
The average age of players turned out to be 31. "These aren't just pasty white teenage boys in a basement—to be sure, they're there, but they're not typical," he said. The older players tended to play more than the kids and, although the total hours played seem large, he said that the time mostly displaced either TV watching or movie going. And the surveys showed that those who viewed TV news in the first place continued to do so, suggesting that gamers really slotted EQ2 into their entertainment time.
Mostly, the gamers seemed healthy; their body mass index was better than the US average and, although they were slightly more depressed than average, they were also less anxious.
Buried among those happy, average players was a small subset of the population—about five percent—who used the game for serious role playing and, according to Williams, "They are psychologically much worse off than the regular players." They belong to marginalized groups..and tended to use the game as a coping mechanism. "
RPers aren't considered to be a "lower class", they're just weird. :P
I like the way you skip over the "what the f**king f**k?" bit of that paragraph.
"Buried among those happy, average players was a small subset of the population—about five percent—who used the game for serious role playing and, according to Williams, "They are psychologically much worse off than the regular players." They belong to marginalized groups, like ethnic and religious minorities and non-heterosexuals, and tended to use the game as a coping mechanism."
My bulls**t alarm is tingling.
First, I'm not a huge pvp fan myself. With that said, I wanted to respond to your arrogant post.
Felons also watch movies, enjoy good food and share a love for many things that regular folks also enjoy. I doubt I will see you boycott any of those things. Also, mr. fake badge, felons are people and as people are flawed just like you and me, pal. Your type of arrogance is typical, though repulsive.
In fact, I would further argue that your pig mentality is a bigger problem in our society than the guy who steals to feed his kids or finds himself addicted to narcotics. Drugs have been and always will be only OK if the government makes a dime off it. Morphine is far more potent than Heroine, but it's used in the medical field on a regular basis. By the way, I don't do drugs and never have.
I use to volunteer for Prisoner Ministries @ Chino here in California, and the guards were so corrupt it was not even funny. The only difference is, they have a position of authority to get away with it.
Like Corporate Avenger so eloquently said:
"The war on drugs is a war on people...and people’s rights are being
violated and you’re incarcerating and caging human beings often times who
have are simply victims of the sickness of addiction, who have become
sucked up in this giant war on drugs, which in fact is a crime against
humanity. The war on drugs is a war on people."
Yeah I found his post to be arrogant as well. PvP games don't make you a felon. In fact actually PvP is part of Roleplaying. I remember once in DnD I killed someone in my party for stealing from me. I just don't like battle grounds and arena type PvP, it is best left in the open world IMO. I haven't roleplayed in a MMO in so long because hardly anyone does it anymore. Granted when I played WoW it was on a PvP server cuz I don't think there was PvP on a RP server but I could be wrong. Im playing LOTRO right now but havent really played it all that much but im on the unoffical RP server and havent seen anything going on. FFXI was the last time I've seen any RP going on and its been a while since I played that. Hopefully there will be a lot of roleplayers in Fallen Earth if so I can see my self playing that game for a long time.
I was going to comment about the war on drugs but I ended up rambling way off topic. lol
Roleplayers are great together but they have several major issues.
(This doesn’t reflect the ENTIRE community of roleplayers but it does reflect MANY and like it or not, this is all true.)
First thing is the fact that you as a person cannot even avoid bashing a certain class of people. You have to automaticaly call them the “L33T Kid”, as many roleplayers do, they put everyone under them and place themselves above. A solid PVPer or just solid player with the best gear will be in the eye of some roleplayers, a piece of trash. That is mainly due to their RP background and stance in their community.
RPERS often if not always think that their more:
- Mature (False, my 10 year old clan is very mature and we're all PVPers in MMOs.)
- Educated (False, most of my clan mates have PHD and Masters)
- Better then the rest (False, because I haven't really met anyone better then anyone in my entire life)
Sorry but that is exactly NOT the case in most instances. The only difference is that the non Rper community are more tolerant to other human beings. Therefor, we do get the so called "L33T" kid and well, we deal with him if we can :P
See, the issue here is that most gamers will get along with each other. Some will whine but most will simply work together and have fun. The world is not exclusively filled with KIDS. However, that is not the case in the RP community. For many RP communities, they see the world filled with KIDS and immature people. Everyone is a L33T loser for them and only a select few Rpers are the above the other Rpers. It’s funny, the first year I played Star Wars: Galaxy, a lot of Rpers used to enjoy calling me a L33T LOLZy PVPer, loser and all those things… Funny thing is, I never trash talked, I was always polite with people, my 200+ member guild were pretty nice towards everyone and we simply did our own stuff without trashing any RP events… heck we even financed a bunch of events, we gave a ventrilo server to a group of them and hosted several of their sites… Yet, I was still being called a L33t pvper… So much that It made me wonder if these people actually had a heart. I left SWG because of the RP community constantly causing chaos after chaos...
Another issue is that Rpers tend to think that they're the producers and storywriters. Many try to completely ignore the actual game storyline. If patch 12.4 didn’t go the way they wanted, the simply ignore it and RP outside of it. Why would any developer want to spend time working on a storyline for Rpers if all they do is spit on the face of the maker? I remember making a huge Neverwinter Night campain and hosting it online 24/7. A few folks came along and played and had fun then one night, a group of Rpers arrived and decided they didn’t like the story so they sent me a bunch critic mails instead of leaving the server.
Don’t get me wrong, I love roleplaying and I wish I could find a solid niche to play with but it all comes down to this:
- Over complicated storylines
- Romantic depressive story
- Unexplained issues
- Heavy trama
- Heavy Drama
- Abusive background (my parents died at the hands of Arthas!!!!)
So, if you’re not in my description then cool, hope I do get to play with you but since everquest 1, I haven’t been proven WRONG often. The more open minded RPers I found did become good friends and even them, understand why I do hold a grudge on RPers. As for me being a RPer, I hosted several live D&D, Vampire events on table and in RL. It's not that I don't like RPing.
People still say 'L33T DEWD' as an insult? Is this 1999? Seriously, roleplayers are no more important than any other gamer, get over it. The stuck up attitude is just as bad as a troll that goes around RP servers and trys to start things.
I love you
Example link added for illustration of point. Enjoy the read, everyone.
Honestly, I understand where you're coming from, and there's a bit too much written for me to address without a two thousand page essay, but I'll try and get onto the general "feel" of your post and go from there.
I, myself, do not believe roleplayers are the "better" class of players or people, I've seen far too many Mary Sues who are often integrated into the community to even pretend they are. I'll admit that they often fool themselves into thinking they're writers of great ability, criticising plotlines ( or, in the case of storyline fanboyism, rabidly defending it ) for things that they shouldn't really be criticised for. I'm not going to suggest whether the roleplayers were "wrong" or not in criticising your storyline, it may have been constructive criticism, it may have been an exceptionally poor storyline or they may have just been arrogant fools, I honestly don't know.
On the note of "ignoring the established storyline" that can work both ways. On the one hand, you have interesting people like the "Dim Day Tribe" ( a tribe of trolls who had their own language, and were absolutely hilarious to roleplay with ) and then you have people like "Mary Sue the Third of Awesumton" who happens to have things that make no sense.
On your point of the changing storyline thing, I myself stopped roleplaying in WoW after they starting letting random people to do semi-canon spin offs ( like their newest manga, I torrented it, it's got truly disgusting writing and plot ) ruining the storyline in my opinion.
Personally, I've never, and I don't believe any of my friends has ever, been subject to this "rabid hatred" thing off roleplayers that you claim to have. Even in SWG I never saw anything like this. Care to explain about them claiming that you're a "1337 PvPer lolnoob"?
Anyway, this is getting off topic, I was merely suggesting that the roleplaying community as a whole is pretty much deprived of a game which gives them the tools to roleplay, and this is an almost entirely unfulfilled niche which will probably lead to the next "successful" MMO.
There's nothing wrong with roleplaying.
But from my experience it seems many people have latched on to being RP'ers as an excuse to bad, sort of like 'casual' only in a different way. So it gives everyone a bad name.
Rpers aren't a lower class. They're just special, veeeeeeeeery special, unique individuals who just happen to enjoy living alternative virtual lives. Nothing weird about that=)